First Amendment News

The National Security Agency has released court documents that authorized the agency to build a huge collection of e-mail and online metadata from the American public to fight terrorism. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorized the collection. (The Washington Post, November 18, 2013, by Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller) The Electronic Freedom Foundation is challenging NSA’s record collection program in court. EFF said about the amicus briefs in the case that they show “the destructive

The Boston police are bringing charges against two number of activists defending the rights of photographers to take photos of police at work and to contact police spokespersons about the issue.  The string of charges began over a lawyer’s videotaping a confrontation during an arrest last August. Carlos Miller, a blogger for the public’s right to take photos in public, is facing charges for witness intimidation over posting the number of a police spokesperson’s work

Big Brother is hovering. Sensity, a private company, is building an infrastructure that could create a world network of smart streetlights with sensors capable of tracing moisture, light seismic activity, radiation, wind temperature, air quality, and cell phone use. It also utilizes audio and high-definition video. All of it could send a huge data collection to a cloud. Sensity CEO Hugh Martin says  he’s shying away from the federal government, but it remains to be

The National Security Agency (NSA) says it needs its gargantuan surveillance network to defend against terrorism, but in reality the spying goes far beyond seeking information about foreign threats by invading citizens’ private lives on a “breathtaking scale.” (Electronic Freedom Foundation, November 11, 2013, by Trevor Timm) The EFF said the NSA surveillance threatens free speech of advocacy groups who are leery of  expressing dissenting views with the knowledge that NSA is recording every phone